PROPER NAMES. 
53 
Atooi in Cook’s Voyages, Atowai in Vancou¬ 
ver’s, and Atoui in one of his contemporaries, is 
also a compound of two words, a Tauai, literally 
and Tauai. The meaning of the word tauai is, to 
light upon, or to dry in the sun; and the name, 
according to the account of the late king, was 
derived from the long droughts which sometimes 
prevailed, or the large pieces of timber which 
have been occasionally washed upon its shores. 
Being the most leeward island of importance, it 
was probably the last inquired of, or the last 
name repeated by the people to the first visitors. 
For, should the natives be pointed to the group, 
and asked the names of the different islands, 
beginning with that farthest to windward, and 
proceeding west, they would say, O Hawaii, Maui, 
Ranai, Morotai, Oahu, a (and) Tauai: the copu¬ 
lative conjunction, preceding the last member of 
the sentence, would be placed immediately before 
Tauai; and hence, in all probability, it has been 
attached to the name of that island, which has 
usually been written, after Cook’s orthography, 
Atooi, or Atowai , after Vancouver. 
The more intelligent among the natives, parti¬ 
cularly the chiefs, frequently smile at the manner 
of spelling the names of places and persons, in 
published accounts of the islands, which they 
occasionally see. 
The orthography employed in the native names 
which occur in the succeeding narrative, is in 
accordance with the power or sound of the letters 
composing the Hawaiian alphabet, and the words 
are represented as nearly as possible to the man¬ 
ner in which they are pronounced by the natives. 
A is always as a in father, or shorter as a in the 
first syllable of aha, e as a in hate, i as i in ma- 
